Hezbollah fighters
With a series of blatant measures, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies are evidently trying to destabilize Lebanon. The development is apiece with how Saudi Arabia and Turkey have both sought to undermine the ceasefire in Syria and to escalate that conflict to a region-wide level.
A
New York Times report this week poses a rather naive conundrum: "Diplomats and analysts have spent several weeks trying to understand why the Saudis would precipitously start penalizing Lebanon - and perhaps their own Lebanese allies - over the powerful influence of Hezbollah, which is nothing new".
Well, here's a quick answer: Russia's very effective squelching of the covert war for regime-change in Syria. That has sent Saudi Arabia and Turkey into a paroxysm of rage.
Russia's military intervention in Syria to defend the Arab state from a foreign-backed covert war involving myriad terrorist proxy groups, has dealt a severe blow to the machinations of Washington, its NATO allies and regional client states.While Washington and its Western partners seem resigned to pursue regime change by an alternative political track, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are stuck in the covert-war groove. They are betting that the terrorist proxy armies they have weaponized can somehow be salvaged from withering losses inflicted by Russian airpower in combination with the ground forces of the Syrian Arab Army, Iranian military advisors and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
Hence, the immediate breaches of the cessation called a week ago by Washington and Moscow in Syria. Turkish military
shelling across the border into northern Syria is not just a breach. It is an outrageous provocation to Syrian sovereignty, as Moscow has pointed out.
Simultaneous Saudi military
mobilization, including Turkish forces, on its northeast border with Iraq, as well as the
reported deployment of Saudi fighter jets to Turkey's Incirlik airbase opposite Syria's northwest Latakia province can also be viewed as calculated moves to undermine the tentative ceasefire.
The logical conclusion of this reckless aggression by both Saudi Arabia and Turkey is to precipitate a wider conflict, one which would draw in the US and Russia into open warfare.The series of Saudi-led initiatives towards Lebanon should be interpreted in this context. In the past week, Saudi Arabia and its closely aligned Sunni monarchies in the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have
declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The word "anachronistic" comes to mind, belying an ulterior motive.
The Saudi rulers, led by King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, also announced that they were canceling plans to grant Lebanon $4 billion in aid. Most of the aid was to be in form of military grants, to be spent on upgrading the Lebanese national army with French weaponry and equipment.
Without providing any proof, the GCC states - Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman in addition to Saudi Arabia - issued travel warnings to their nationals intending to visit Lebanon. The
GCC also claimed that Hezbollah was interfering in their internal affairs and trying to recruit Gulf nationals into the organization to fight in Syria. The GCC has even threatened to deport Lebanese expatriate workers, some half a million of which work in the Gulf.
There were also regional media
reports last week of a large cache of weapons having been seized by Greek authorities, stowed illicitly onboard a cargo ship sailing from Turkey to Lebanon.
The cumulative intent seems patent.
The Saudis and their regional allies - who have been pushing for regime change for the past five years against the Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah-allied government of President Bashar al-Assad
- see the escalation of regional instability as the best way to salvage their covert war in Syria.Washington, London and Paris probably have sufficient cynical intelligence to realize that the covert war involving terrorist proxies is no longer a viable option - given the formidable forces arrayed in support of the Syrian state, not least Russian air power.
The Saudis and the Turkish regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan appear to be inflexibly wedded to the covert war agenda. For these powers anything less than the outright removal of Assad would be seen as a grave blow to their despotic egos and, for them, an unbearable boost to their regional rival, Shia-dominated Iran.
The GCC criminalization of Shia-affiliated Hezbollah is obviously a fit of revenge-seeking given how the militia has ably helped the Syrian army retake major areas from the regime-change Sunni extremist insurgents, in conjunction with the Russian air strikes. The steady shutting down of border crossings in Latakia, Idlib and Aleppo has cut-off the terror brigades from their weapons supply routes via Turkey. This is partly why the Erdogan regime has responded by cross-border shelling in order to give re-supply efforts a modicum of artillery cover.
Moreover, the Saudi-led campaign to sanction Hezbollah is also aimed at destabilizing the sectarian fault lines inside Lebanon. Hezbollah may be denigrated by Washington and some other Western states as a "terrorist group" and of presiding over "a state within a state" due to its military wing which exists alongside the Lebanese national army.
Nevertheless,
Hezbollah has constitutionally recognized legitimacy within Lebanon. This is partly due to the militia's primary role in driving out the US-backed Israeli military occupation of the country in 2000 and again in 2006. For many Lebanese people, including Christians and Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah is held with pride as an honorable resistance force to US-led imperialism in the region.
The party - which
Russia also recognizes as a legitimate national resistance movement - comprises about 10 per cent of the Lebanese parliament and holds two cabinet positions in the coalition Beirut government.
So
the Saudi-led proposal to sanction Hezbollah seems nothing more than a gratuitous bid to open up sectarian fissures that have cleaved Lebanon in the recent past during its 1975-1990 civil war. The provocation of labeling a member of government in a foreign state as "terrorist" - seemingly out of the blue - has to be seen as a tendentious bid to destabilize. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah this week
condemned the Saudi bid to inflame sedition in Lebanon, and it is hard to disagree with that assessment.
There are still pockets of extremist Sunni support within Lebanon that the Saudis and Turkey appear to be trying to incite. During the Syrian conflict, there have been sporadic outbreaks of violence in the cities of Sidon and Tripoli by Salafist elements with close links to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Now those same elements are being incited to take to the streets again.
It is not clear if Lebanon can hold together. A government minister linked to a pro-Saudi faction has
resigned in recent weeks over what he claims is "Hezbollah domination" in Lebanese politics.
Many Lebanese are discontent over social and economic problems dogging the country. A refuse-collection backlog over the past year has left large parts of the capital overflowing with putrid waste. The tiny country of four million is also feeling the strain of accommodating some one million Syrian refugees.
The thought of re-opening old wounds and re-igniting the horror of civil war is a heavy burden on most Lebanese citizens that may be enough to make them balk at malign pressures.
But what can be said for sure is that the role of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab monarchies is absolutely unconscionable and criminal. They seem fully prepared to plunge yet another neighboring country into a sectarian bloodbath in order to gratify their illicit regional ambitions.
Designating Hezbollah a 'terrorist' organization places the KSA and GCC in the position to act like Russia: attack Hezbollah in Syria based on this boot-strap logic of fighting the 'terrorists'. Terrorists they have simply and conveniently designated as such to further their evil, murderous agendas in Syria.
We know the US and its murderous stooges completely ignore Syrian sovereignty with absolute impunity. Russia is 100% legal in what they do in Syria fighting UN designated terrorists, but the US/NAZO/Turkey/Saud 'interventions' are clear violations of Syrian sovereignty and international law. The US 'coalition' fighting Daesh in Syria is an ugly, murderous, completely illegal joke, which they are getting away scot-free with.
Now the GCC has issued itself a similar 'exceptionalist' fig-leaf for launching an attack on 'terrorists' in Syria i.e., Hezbollah. As part of the US-led coalition, they simply go in ostensibly to attack Daesh (their own mercenaries!), and then almost exclusively go after Hezbollah at the same time, claiming the privilege of such as their 'right' to fight against (self-)designated 'terrorists'.
They claim the supreme moral imperative to do so, immediately alleging hyper-hypocrisy against protesting Russia and Iran, which said insane message gets trumpeted 24/7 by the zionist-controlled MSM, and it sets up Russia and/or Iran to be designated the aggressor if they do anything about it. Massive sanctions will be implemented immediately, if not supportive military cover, or even a psychotic prelude to WW3, if Russia/Iran oppose this. The possibilities for the zionist-anglo alliance are simply endless in such a scenario. (And don't forget those lovely, Mossad-approved Saudi nukes. Mustn't forget about them!)
Of course, the GCC/KSA get ugly-cheeky and give 'warning' to Iran and Russia via a general statement not to aid the 'terrorists' (Hezbollah) and to 'get out of the way' while the terrorists get whacked, and this provides media and political cover in our insane world of "invert and multiply" MSM messages (like the constant claiming of Russia to be the outlaw in Syria, randomly and callously targeting Syrian infrastructure and killing civilians and violating international law; all the very actions the US led coalition is doing every single day in Syria, again, with total impunity on all fronts.) The ludicrousness of such actions is irrelevant, as the MSM says and does the most ridiculous clap-trap nonsense non-stop, in support of the goals of the zionist-anglo alliance.
All of this is in addition to what Finian Cunningham brilliantly sets forth in his essay, of course.
I hope I am wrong about this. But it seems so in step with what has been going on in Syria and the world at large, that it cannot be dismissed as simply 'insane'. The GCC and the KSA/Turkey do insane things every day, all day. Nothing new there.
And if Uncle Shmuel has promised covert, or maybe even overt, support, then it will happen. Hell, the US can launch a simple coalition movement into Syria to go after Daesh (from its air bases it is rapidly constructing in Northeastern Syria, as I write this), so it cannot be dismissed. The KSA/GCC and the Turks can join the anti-Daesh coalition, and then take things a step further, while Uncle Shmuel and NAZO survey and decide what destabilizing move to do next. What happens then would be anybody's guess.
But one thing is for certain, for Syria and Syrians: it won't be pretty.
(And The Cancer, Israel, sits back and smiles, with its sweating, stinking hand on the strings of the situation, quietly directing matters towards a goal that benefits their own interests above all else....)